Monday, July 06, 2009

Monday Evening Round-Up: Ro-bama, Beer, Dune

The Robo/ Disney Conspiracy

It seems Disney has joined with the robots to work against us.




Beer Surplus Jettison Cooperation


Leaguers will know that my one regret about opening the doors to League HQ in celebration is that we often wind up with a great deal of undrunk beer and beer-like items (Mike's Hard Lemonade, etc...). Well, this is a problem no more.

We have a house full of recently graduated Lutherans living across the street who, upon my offer, seemed more than willing to take the surplus off our hands. Once again, our fridge is free for the storage of leftovers and numerous tupperware items of indeterminate storage points.

I salute you, Lutherans, for your readiness to consume that which we could not.

Dune

So, Leaguers, I have a confession. I've never read Frank Herbert's Sci-Fi classic, "Dune". Nor have I seen the movie in its entirety. I think i watched the entire original mini-series on Sci-Fi (or, SyFy, as they've rebranded themselves this week), but since I can't recall how it ended, I can't say for certain.

Its embarrassing to have a weak point in my nerd-armor, but there you are. I've no real excuse, but I've also always been a much bigger fan of sci-fi movies than I have been that of books. I read a lot of Asimov and Bradbury at one point, and some other stuff, but sort of lost interest in bothering to read the actual books.

But during our celebration of independence from the bastards in England, I got caught in a 30 minute conversation on the subject of "Dune" between Steven, Lauren, Eric and Patrick. And I figured... oh, hell. I might as well.

So posts may be short for a while, because I'm actually going to read a book.

Yeah, I know...

4 comments:

Michael Corley said...

Heh. I just made a comic involving dune here - http://www.bitstrips.com/user/12563/read.php?comic_id=285285&subsection=1

NTT said...

Dune is one of the best speculative fiction novels ever written. The prose gets awkward at times but after reading it you will see how it influenced not just sci-fi writers, but movie directors, critics and academics in the years to come. Herbert's vision of a an environmental collapse, ecological science, geo-politics and religious allegory was visionary.

It's also a very fast read with tons of action, betrayal and kung-fu (except it's not called that but it is). The trilogy itself is also dispairingly dark on the limits of humanity to create an enlightened civilization. I got depressed after finishing Children of Dune, the third novel in the series. You should at least though complete Dune, the first novel as it ends like a single book.

Simon MacDonald said...

I agree with @NTT, Dune is a great read but you can and probably should stop after the first book. It is a nice self contained story and ends on a positive note.

J.S. said...

Dune is one of my favorite books. I like both the Lynch movie and the miniseries with William Hurt, but neither are as good as the book.